Husain Journal

Ever felt that you have an irritating traffic of tasks jostling in your mind to get checked off? Emails, assignments, medical, home errands and your to-do list can go on. A mere thought of these tasks is overwhelming. You try to do it all, but you feel that your hands are tied. You feel confused, clueless, and even frustrated. You think deeply about getting it all done, but soon your mind spins up clever excuses to keep you off it. And? The next moment you find yourself putting your feet up and having your favourite drink or watching television or scrolling on the social media. Because confess it to yourself – you know how to distract yourself. You know how to get yourself busy with something easy and dumb so that you can keep your mind far from grappling with the tough. But the revulsion of this escapism? Even though you’re busy in such mindless, low-quality activities, the burden of pending tasks continues to silently scream on you in the background. Has it ever ha...

For quite some time, and especially after my mother whispered goodbye to this fleeting world, I’m having difficulty waking up fresh and energetic. Yes, you might say that waking up with that cloggy feeling in mornings is pretty general, but if due to them your normal work is skidding off the rails? The alarm bells begin to ring, bang, pound. And if you snooze, you lose. You have to wake up. Well, first joining a gym and racking my bones to the point of cracking appeared clever. I reasoned that this way I’ll fall asleep as I threw myself on the bed. Good idea? But this required a heck lot of time and effort. Going to and from gym, managing office and personal work – all this appeared a little beyond the time and energy at my disposal. (Additionally, I hate sad and crappy music played in these places. Isn’t it true that all that we expose ourselves to – knowingly or unknowingly – has a bearing on our thinking?) Second I thought of purchasing some physical exercising ma...

Ever found yourself avoiding projects that entail risks of failure and mind-racking work? Yeah, I’m talking of work that you put up to be reviewed and judged. Not the work that you tinker around with to fill up your time with a ‘productive’ activity – which is for the sheer sake of practice. Not the work that you know you would shove away so that it gets lost in the dark gulf of obscurity. Here I rather am talking of work that stands the hair-raising risk of rejection, failure, condemnation. Work in which you squeeze out your heart and soul and blood. Not 100% sure if you thirst for risk and are prepared to be slapped with rejection even after putting out your best – but I confess here that yes, I try several crutch activities to avoid work that entail risk and toil. This is the reason why before publishing on my blog, I feel hesitant – because I fully know that my work would be up there to come under people’s scrutiny. I instead prefer to read something which melts away...

If presently you can’t drum up the courage to say no to others, then admit it – the scathing truth is that you don’t give your work a priority. You likely think that you can do your work any time afterwards, and this is the reason why the requests of others – which are timebound unlike yours appear more urgent to you. (That what’s delayed is delayed, sometimes forever.) So? Top import for you to pursue a few tasks and have a strict work regimen because then it would get easier for you to say no to others. So go ahead now and write down what’s to be done and tell yourself that you have to check off this particular task before such and such date, and you’ll likely get the required guts to say no to others’ requests. Gripping? Then put it to practice – now . If you’re following your work regimen and are unable to fulfil others’ low-important requests, don’t care about them. Those who have so thin regards for your aims and tasks shouldn’t be there to suck your energy ...